


Please

by meinposhbastard



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Whump (Good Omens), Gen, Pain, Post-Fall (Good Omens), Pre-Fall (Good Omens), South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Wings, but it's more 'comfort ending', fall - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22819108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinposhbastard/pseuds/meinposhbastard
Summary: When Crowley fell, his white feathers started falling, too, one by one, and it felt like someone tore into him, piece by bloody piece. That's why his fall took the longest, because he wasn't ready to renounce his wings. But when he reached the destination it took him millennia to grow the black feathers. And it hurt each bloody millimetre.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	Please

**Author's Note:**

> A concept of mine that hit me about a week ago. Never intended to write fic for it, but here we are.
> 
> Special kudos and love to [ Xim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ximeria), [sleepdrunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepdrunk/pseuds/sleepdrunk), and [vgersix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vgersix/profile) for helping me make it better (or worse, as the case may be).

* * *

# * the fall * 

Thoughts snap, viciously and lightning fast, from one synapse to another. 

He doesn’t expect the burning. The acid in his mouth. The scream in his eyes as his celestial essence is purged from his God-given form, infinite gram by infinite gram. The shock is the worst. The tears that won’t come. The violet gurgle of bodies vibrating aggressively in his throat, trapped. His mouth, a sealed tomb of his own making. 

The same mouth that asked. 

And begged to _know more._

He’s alone in this. His falling. His own— _remaking_. There’s no one to blame and no one to pull him back. Catch him before he reaches— reaches— not Heaven. Non safety. 

It isn’t betrayal, if what connects you is just the awareness of each other’s existence. It can only be called as such if you can look into eyes that once trusted you, that loved and cared for you and see the pain grow in raw strokes. The war, which you instigated, raging inside them; devastating their being from the inside out, with nothing to staunch the bleeding but the hot mess that you are. 

There’s a name that lives in the cracks of his chapped lips, at the round corner of his nostrils and between his eyelashes. It made his grace fluctuate with love, indistinguishable from that reserved for God.

His wings are the last to start burning as he crashes through a multitude of realities, each one stripping him of another layer, leaving him raw and scorched and finally bare.

_One feather at a time._

He screams.

_One feather at a time._

The name slips from his mind.

_One feather at a time._

He cries; tears of grace and blood mingling and pulling down a patina of watery crimson like realities overlapping each other.

_One feather at a time._

His memory of Heaven is eaten by the darkness.

_One feather at a time._

There’s no name in the craters that incinerated his lips.

_One feather at a time._

The tears burn away as fire convulses his body before it takes the last scrap of himself from his graceless, frail hands.

_One feather at a time._

He doesn’t want to let them go!

_One feather at a time._

_Please. Please! PLEASE!_

_One feather at a time._

He crashes with a violent crack that sends a shock-wave of light across the universe. It expands, and expands, and he forgets what the sound meant, what it exists for.

The last feather drops on the back of his hand, melting into his sulphuric blood, dripping as if it takes pieces of flesh with it, hot and fulsome. Eyes shiny with yellow pain, and yellow forgetfulness, and yellow absence, and yellow nothing.

He crawls from his crater, the bare, charred bones of his wings scraping the hot ground to push his shaking, spasming body up, up, towards something. Anything will be better than the gaping maw creaking wildly in the middle of his chest and letting in all the cold in the universe.

When he opens his mouth, smoke pours out.

His jaw cracks and creaks like unhinged dementia let loose in a room full of metal shards. The smoke blurs what’s beyond the lip of his crater. Shivering, even though his skin is on fire and his mind wants to leak through every single pore on his head, he pulls himself onto the rocky surface and peers into a thick, stygian night. 

He’s not alone. 

His new, charred skin prickles with the attention of a multitude. Then, out of the black, mouths open in toothy grins. A sickly, rotting hand reaches out to help him. He grasps it and he’s helped to his feet— only to be shoved backwards into the pit. 

# * black *

They grow.

One millimetre at a time.

He doesn’t breathe. One, because Hell stinks. And two, because it’d mean allowing his demonic corporation to feel all that pain.

He doesn’t scream anymore because his teeth grind into each other, making enough noise to appease his burning mind.

For half of his new existence, he drifts aimlessly within the confines of Hell without knowing who he is or what he’s doing there. The other demons jostle and hiss at him. He never retaliates.

The black hole inside his chest numbs him enough to not care. Yet.

Yet, he’s sure he’s forgetting something. Before he plunged through realities. It’s important to him. Or— well, it’s been important to him before. Probably. He can’t be sure. He doesn’t _think_ about what existed before this very moment. For all he cares to admit to himself he’s been there for his entire existence, walking around sulphuric pools and too-narrow corridors with too small-minded creatures that look like cardboard cutouts from an inky well of betrayed dreams.

Another millimetre.

His teeth screech. His new claws bite into his palms. The ground underneath him shakes and the demons give him a wide berth. They know. They know that if they touch him in any capacity during this excruciating second, he will react violently; a rabid, snarling creature. They don’t know what he is, even though he fell. They don’t know that he didn’t renounce his wings willingly, that a shriveling piece of him still clings to them, to that memory.

That’s why the ground answers his aching, silent screams. 

Most of them would enjoy hearing his anguished cries. It’s a sick pleasure in a place that abounds with viciousness. It perverts and corrupts. But he knows. He’s heard the whispers. Someone high up the food chain ordered them to back off.

His wings are always on display. He has no energy and no reason why he should keep them tucked away. They bleed, black ichor scorching the ground in his wake, as they grow. See, this is why he cannot stop walking. The pain would shred him to pieces, if he sags even for a moment.

Then, someone touches the tip of his wing, the sharp end of the bone. He pulses in hot waves of unrelenting pain. His body seizes up, the ground shakes violently.

He doesn’t retaliate. It’s too much. A gasp is wrenched from his chest, light dispersing the darkness in his mind. It doesn’t belong to him. Nor do the voice and the words. Nor does the touch. 

He convulses.

The tenderness of that tears into him like light into a cracked casket and he screams with everything he’s got.

# * before *

Angels are beings of light, joy, gentleness, and pure love. There is power in such a mix. Power to question, and power to experience more, outside of any duty-bound angel’s knowledge.

He loves helping with Creation.

Not with the more minutiae-focused projects that will see the planet Earth grow to be populated by many magnificent creatures, but with everything that lies beyond this insignificant planet. The nebulae. The other galaxies.

He unspools another batch of dust from his pouch, adding colour and planets with a flourish which he had invented. The pouch was made for him by God Herself, a source of constant wonder and joy as it doesn’t serve just one purpose. He chuckles as the galaxy swirls lazily around itself and his breath ignites a few planets on fire.

_You will love the next project I have for you all,_ God’s eternal voice insinuates itself among his thoughts.

_I am positive we will. May I discuss this with the angel Aziraphale?_

_You may._

The rush of love and warmth that God sends his way has him close his eyes, and he glides aimlessly across universes, lulled into something that is not wakefulness, even though he is still aware of his surroundings.

_You will take quickly to this state of being_ , God’s voice insinuates itself again in his thoughts, gently and a bit sad. _It will help you forget sometimes, even if for a few blinks in time._

_Forget what?_

He receives no answer, so he fluctuates back to the Host.

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale says upon seeing him. “What have you done to your wings! They are dishevelled. Come, sit by me, I will help.”

More than happy to comply, he sits on the nearby cloud of stardust and unfolds his wings to their full height. His eyelids flutter and close as his fellow angel begins the slow process of disentangling his feathers and rearranges them so that his grace can shine once again through each and every one.

Wings are every angel’s pride and joy, insofar as an angel knows what pride feels like. For him it’s a matter of thinking about them with as much fondness as he thinks about Aziraphale or as much respect and love as they all have for God.

“Sit still, darling boy,” Aziraphale admonishes softly, his fingers making Crowley shiver. 

Even though angels trust each other implicitly, he always felt that there are some angels one trusted more than the others. Case in point, Aziraphale is that angel for him. His touch soothes him in ways he’s unable to explain. The glide of fingers across his pristine feathers, the righting of every little wrong feels like Aziraphale is ordering the very fabric of the universe. But that is silly. He is just taking care of his wings, a privilege which he will pay back tenfold.

“Are you awake, my dear?”

“What other state could I be in?”

“You fell quiet.”

“I was just thinking.”

“About?”

“About what God told me out there in Her vast Creation.”

“Is it anything we will know about?”

“It is a new project She will share with us in a bit.”

“Oh, that sounds thrilling!”

He nods and ignores the nagging feeling right between his wings, how it— it— it slithers down his spine.

# * please *

_My darling boy._

_What’s happening to you?_

_No. No!_

_Your glow is fading. Your true form! Scales? My dear— what— I can’t feel your warmth anymore. What is wrong? Please talk to me! Please!_

“My dear?”

Crowley jolts awake, eyes roaming around, disoriented.

“Oh dear, are you quite all right?”

Aziraphale is by his elbow, gentle hand squeezing his forearm comfortingly. He isn’t comforted.

“‘S’all right, angel. Everything’s fine.”

Yet he feels like his skin is made of frizz, charged with untamed energy, ready to zig-zag across the room. He tries to take back his arm, but the angel doesn’t let him. 

“Angel, what—”

“You were dreaming. A rather horrible dream, considering the mutterings.”

He hums. “Yeah, happens. Normal stuff.”

Aziraphale purses his lips. “You asked for my forgiveness.”

Crowley sucks in a breath. He really needs to get out of their bedroom, take some fresh air, _do something._

“I— I don’t remember.” He tries to take back his arm again, but Aziraphale won’t let go.

“Please talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, angel. Now, could you, y’know, let go of my hand. I need—”

“We’ve been living for more than a decade together, my dear. You’ve never had nightmares. Not quite so— intense as this one. Something is going on with you that you don’t want me to know. But I want to. I want to help you.”

“Nothing you can do.” He stares at the multi-coloured quilt, the one Aziraphale made himself four years ago when he got into the crochet frenzy. “It’s all in my head. Memory of sorts. It’ll pass.”

Yet Aziraphale waits. And doesn’t let go.

“Angel, please.”

Aziraphale shakes his head. “I’ve let you go far too many times, my dear. Remember what you promised me when we moved in together? That whatever happens, whatever plagues us, we will stand up against it together. You promised me that.”

Crowley’s teeth screech against each other and the memory floods back. He whimpers and crawls towards his angel, making a cocoon out of Aziraphale’s strong arms and soft front. Even his legs come to entwine with Crowley’s, as if sensing that his demon needs grounding, needs someone to keep him still and not let him go.

They don’t talk. Aziraphale doesn’t ask anything of him, and he doesn’t share anything from his thoughts. But he feels their selves mingle through the thin fabric of their corporations. He feels when Aziraphale finds out what plagues him. The resulting warmth and light suffusing every dark nook and crevice in his being makes him shudder and draw closer to the one angel in all of creation that he’s missed for millennia and then spend probably just as many trying to remember.

They’ve both missed each other. Both hurt and were damaged in such infinitesimal ways that no one would be able to fully heal. 

But it’s all right because Crowley also remembers that he’s promised himself and Aziraphale that he would protect him and what they have with everything he’s got. That also means protecting this tender love between them even from himself.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, eyes closed, into Aziraphale’s neck.

“I know, my dear. I know. It’s all right. I’m here. I won’t let you go.”

He drifts, appeased by the warmth in Aziraphale’s voice, and lets the angel hold him, every charred piece and every insecurity. There’s no one he would trust more with that. Not even himself.


End file.
